Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Robb Hare

Canada's National Observer @nationalobserver.com · 21h

We're going public today with a powerful new tool for researching, following and reporting on local governments across Canada.

It’s dragging cities and towns into the 21st century by making 550 municipalities’ public meetings easy to search, all in one place, for the first time.

Canada’s National Observer unveils a powerful tool for fighting disinformation

Civic Searchlight brings together municipal meeting transcripts from across Canada into a searchable database for the first time. It has already been used to fight disinformation, report on impact, di...

www.nationalobserver.com

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 21h

Ditto. I saw that Famous Artist released a new album, thought “hm,” and then went on with my day.

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 2d

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 2d

Some good news for a change

Global renewable energy generation surpasses coal for first time

Record solar expansion and steady wind growth driving world’s shift away from fossil fuels in 2025, report finds

www.theguardian.com

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Sista 𓅓 @sista.bsky.social · 3d

Be the light you want to see in the world 🔥

Garden gnome throwing a molotov painting
Artist Jay kell

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 3d

I got through the 80s without seeing any Back to the Future movies or Footloose. More semi-recently, I’ve never seen Titanic, Avatar, Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Mad Men.

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MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 5d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 10d

I may have found my defining quote.

Pair this with my pinned post and you will see what I mean!

From a poster called “just shower thoughts“ reading: when people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about radically, changing the present by doing something small, barely anyone in the present to really thinks that they can radically change the future by doing something small.

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divine beastmode @gunstreet.bsky.social · 13d

the post office is a public service. it doesn’t need to make money. public transit doesn’t need to make money. the library doesn’t need to make money. some things exist for the public good and we desperately need lawmakers to stop thinking about them in terms of capitalism. these are not businesses.

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Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 13d

WWI-Era Shipwrecks in Mallows Bay Form Ecological Sanctuary www.scientificamerican.com/article/wwi-...

Drone Footage Reveals How History Became Habitat in the Potomac

Nearly 100 years ago dozens of ships were abandoned in a shallow bay in the Potomac River. Today plants and animals are thriving on the skeletons of these vessels

www.scientificamerican.com

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 13d

Neoliberalism has a lot to answer for. I’m with you: Canada Post is an essential service and public good. By all means run it well and keep an eye on costs but stop insisting it must break even or turn a profit. Just fund it.

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 13d

Mads Mikkelsen has some explaining to do

‘Professional actor’ behind attacks that closed Danish airports, defence minister says

Drones overfly four more airports forcing Aalborg to halt traffic two nights after shutdown at Copenhagen terminals

www.theguardian.com

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 14d

Alberta’s government is doing their part to bring down barriers to interprovincial trade, I see.

The Walrus @thewalrus.ca · 14d

In the aftermath of Alberta’s new tax on “high-value” British Columbia wine, Lightning Rock Winery owner Ron Kubek has watched sales to Albertans drop by 50 percent. “I’m seeing a lot more abandoned carts, unfortunately.” thewalrus.ca/the-wine-wars-ar...

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 14d

Love it.

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 14d

Thank you! I’ll have to look for that series.

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 15d

A few minutes ago I was chuckling over my habitual overuse of “just”.

Until people decided em dashes were an Unquestioned Signifier of Gen AI Use, I was quite fond of them. I would often go back through a draft to take many out.

And I’m fond of starting the last line of a passage with “and”.

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 15d

Wow what a panel..when / what run was that from?

(Also when did Piotr turn silver at the sides? )

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 15d

That is one of my favourites.

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 15d

We switched to Qobuz a while back. Based in France, some kind of Canadian involvement (yay!). Sound quality is amazing. No ads.

Still, we are often tempted to go back to having a stereo.

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Appalbarry @appalbarry.com · 15d

Just a quick update, for all the "bike lanes are killing us" people: Cambridge UK has probably 3 bikes for every car, and tons of pedestrians, and it all works fantastically well.
That's not because of bike lanes, or anything else. It's because Cambridge drivers mostly aren't obnoxious assholes.

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Susie Dent @susiedent.com · 15d

To ‘ultra-crepidate’ (19th century) is to lecture others on subjects you know very little about.

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 15d

I love these little cats! I admire your skill and how you convey so much personality in your drawing. Your art *is* amazing to your followers and fans.

By all means try something new and stretch yourself artistically. But don’t disparage the great work you do already.

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Robb Hare @robbhare.ca · 15d

Man there’s a show I haven’t thought about in years!

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Nick Sousanis @nsousanis.bsky.social · Aug 20

Probably should’ve posted the Ai statement separately - not sure how it displays with the rest. It’s not so different from what I originally posted, but prefer people get the final version. Have at it & hope it’s useful to you in your classes. All on my site here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - for that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning.

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Molly Rookwood @mollyrookwood.bsky.social · Dec 17

Ted Chiang:
"The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write [...]. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning."

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